Resilience

Resilience is the capacity of a social-ecological system to absorb or withstand perturbations and other stressors such that the system remains within the same regime, essentially maintaining its structure and functions. It describes the degree to which the system is capable of self-organization, learning and adaptation (Holling 1973, Gunderson & Holling 2002, Walker et al. 2004).

People are part of the natural world. We depend on ecosystems for our survival and we continuously impact the ecosystems in which we live from the local to global scale. Resilience is a property of these linked social-ecological systems (SES). When resilience is enhanced, a system is more likely to tolerate disturbance events without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. Furthermore, resilience in social-ecological systems has the added capacity of humans to anticipate change and influence future pathways.

Reduced resilience increases the vulnerability of a system to smaller disturbances that it could previously cope with. Even in the absence of disturbance, gradually changing conditions, e.g., nutrient loading, climate, habitat fragmentation, etc., can surpass threshold levels, triggering an abrupt system response. The new state of the system may be less desirable if ecosystem services that benefit humans are diminished, as in the case of productive freshwater lakes that become eutrophic and depleted of their biodiversity. Restoring a system to it's previous state can be complex, expensive, and sometimes impossible. Research suggests that to restore some systems to their previous state requires a return to conditions that existed well before the point of collapse (Scheffer et al. 2001).

The seeds of SESMAD were sown at a meeting of RAYS (Resilience Alliance Young Scholars) several years ago and have developed into a web-based database of SES theories & now a paper in Global Environmental Change.